How Bella Gets Her Groove Back
by tomato-greens
Summary: Apocryphal. Spoilers. This is how it could have happened.


I haven't even finished the first book, so spoilers are from friends and the internet. No harm intended; no money made; Twilight and assorted materials are not copyrighted to me, but to Stephenie Meyer and whichever movie company owns the rights to the story. I don't think Edward actually smokes (right?) but I decided that it'd be an Edward sort of vice to have. Apparently Renesmee's name may actually be spelled Renesemee, but since I haven't seen it in official text and the extra "e" just makes it worse, I decided to go with the former. Bella is never allowed to name anything ever again.

-

One day Bella opens her eyes. She sees Edward; she sees the baby; she sees what she's done with her life, what she'd given up in the name of some adolescent infatuation.

"Fuck you, Edward Cullen," says Bella, and scoops her baby up in her arms. "Fuck you and your, your, your _fucking manhandling_ and every perfect bone in your body. I never should have followed you."

"But, baby," says Edward, every muscle in his beautiful porcelain face twisted in concern.

"No," says Bella. "No. I am _not_ a baby. Stop treating me like one."

Edward sits there, his face shocked, and Bella notices with a malicious glee that his pants are grass-stained, his hair ruffled.

She turns, puts the baby in the carseat, and marches back, holding something in her hand. It's a carton of cigarettes, battered and mostly empty. "Never smoke near my child again," Bella says, and throws it at his head. "No, not even: never come near us again," she finishes, and she storms back to the car.

-

They move, then, to as sunny a place as they had ever been. Bella stops calling her Renesmee and shortens it to Ren. "Family name," she tells everyone when they ask, and sometimes when they don't. She gets a job, her own apartment, and never tells Ren anything about her father save that he had been sick for a long time. It was true, she reasons. He _had_ been sick.

When Ren gets a little older, Bella starts going to night school, to get the education she had given up for nothing more than an illusion: a trick of the light, like diamonds on skin. Her love faded fast once the clouds had cooled her fevered, rushed affection. She gets her degree, and a promotion, and next thing she knows she's curled up, head to her knees, hiding between her bed and her dresser.

"Mom," says Ren, seventeen and brilliant. She'd been accepted into Dartmouth entirely on her own terms. "Mom, what's wrong?"

Bella can't say it: Ren is so much smarter than she had been, sassier and lacking Bella's naïveté. She can't speak beyond, "Edward, Edward," and Ren frowns.

"My father?" she asks, and Bella nods as she shuts her eyes and covers her face with her hands.

Try as she might, Ren never gets the whole story, but she understands enough of Bella's frightened babble that her eyes widen. She talks to her school counselor about support groups; she can't help herself.

"What's going on?" Miss Cranford asks, but Ren shakes her head. "It's not me," she explains. "It's my mom. I don't know what happened, but it was something bad."

"I just, I don't want you to grow up before your time," Bella had said; Miss Cranford repeats the sentiment, but Ren raises an eyebrow. They both know Ren was ready to leave high school before she'd ever entered the building.

Miss Cranford pulls some strings; Ren drives her mother to the building, which is made of brick and is utterly nondescript. "See, nothing to worry about," she says, and opens the car door. Bella looks small and fragile in the bright sun, and Ren suddenly sees how vulnerable she is. She helps her to the door.

And so Bella sits, and listens, and week after week she hears story after story. When she's finally ready, she stands up and takes a breath. "My name is Isabella," she hears herself say. "And my husband was abusive."

By the time Ren's gotten her B.A. and moved on to grad school, she's able to drive for herself again. Her hands don't shake anymore; she doesn't grip her arms to comfort herself from phantom bruises. And when she shows up, smiling, to visit Ren's apartment (which had somehow become her boyfriend's apartment somewhere along the way; but Frank was awkwardly adorable and Bella was pretty sure they were having sex), she shakes hands with Frank without flinching. Ren gives her a hug.

"I'm so proud of you," says Bella, and Ren tightens her arms and says, "Me too, Mom, you're the best."

And they all live mostly happily ever after.


End file.
